Via the redoubtable Taryn Hart over at Plutocracy Files comes an article written nearly nine years ago that I like very, very much.
(By the way . . . Taryn has been doing a yeoman's job -- yeowoman's job? -- blogging about the Occupy Movement. If you want to keep abreast of what is happening with Occupy her site really should be on your "favorites" list.)
Anyway . . . she reproduced the article on her site and strongly suggested others re-post and, hey!, after reading it who wouldn't want to repost it?
Hippie Crap Saves the World is below the fold.
Hippie Crap Saves The World / Can better orgasms and upping your personal vibe really thwart BushCo idiocy?
February 28, 2003|By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wanna know what conservatives really hate?
What makes everyone from harmless GOP dittoheads to ultra-right-wing nutjobs full of rage and hiss and homophobia and blind jingoism roll their eyes and throw up their hands and scamper for their Bibles for reassurance that life is still repressed and we're still going to war and Dubya is still smackin' 'round the envurment along with them wimmin and homosekshuls and furriners?
Why, hippie crap, of course. New-age babble about love and peace and godless pagan prayer, organic foods and sustainable trees and chakras, divinity and luscious goddesses and soul paths and upping your personal vibration to counter all the venomous hatred slinging about the culture like some sort of conservative, fearmongering weapon of mass depression. Man, they just hate that.
The incessant drive to war, the blank-eyed young soldiers, the drab oil fields, the terse U.N. debates, Rumsfeld's ink-black eyes, the violence and 9/11 and Osama in hiding, Saddam's sneering and Shrub's smirking and Dick Cheney's defibrillator cranking on 11 -- these events are considered "real," they are tangible and raw and ugly and happening right now and we've got the pictures to prove it, all over the media, grainy and grim and mean, CNN and Fox News and frowning pundits and 100-point newspaper headlines, so you know it must be true.
Then there's you, walking through your daily life right now, eating and laughing and screwing and paying rent and thinking for yourself, filtering the onslaught and trying to remain connected to something divine and universal and authentic, all while straining to put this national trend toward violence and warmongering into some sort of acceptable frame.
You are not "real" in this same way. This is the feeling. Your experience is somehow irrelevant; what you do and how you maneuver this daily treachery is an insignificant side note to the big ugly daily political machinations because hey, it's war. It's the Big Boys. Angry White Men with very serious penis issues. All that matters is the machine, and the money, and the oil, and the WMD and the drumbeat rhetoric.
Which is, of course, utter BS. Here is what conservatives hate most: the idea that you really can, and do, make a difference. That you, hopefully working to align yourself with something deeper and more informed and perhaps not exactly Christian, or corporate, not exactly lockstep mainstream flag-waving God-fearing asexual consumer drone, you can affect the world, directly, right now, in ways you might not even realize, in ways that make them tremble and wince, in how much you laugh and love and eat and sleep and screw and breathe and in how deeply you penetrate into the soul's raison d'etre. But you gotta work at it. And it ain't easy. See? Fluffy new-age crap. They really hate that.
Here is the great fallacy of the American ethos, the one that powers SUV purchases and spawns a billion McDonald's franchises and gun purchases and Adam Sandler movies: it is the notion that Americans exist in a freewheelin' vacuum, that our daily choices don't, in fact, affect the world, and our neighbors, and our children, and the environment and our own bodies.
It is the idea that those very choices -- foods you eat, cars you drive, shows you watch, personal relations you have, waste you create, choices you make -- can't, in a very real and immediate way, erode your divine links, spit on your spiritual spark, taint your mystical meat. Every single one, every single time.
In other words, in buying that gun, smacking that child, abusing that spouse, screaming at that neighbor, buying that thuggish SUV, supporting that war, wishing death upon all them damn furriners, you may think you're exercising your God-given all-'Murkin right to do/say/drive whatever the hell you want because you're an American goddammit and no one will tell you how to live so back off.
Not quite. Rather, you are also injecting a deliberate dose of bitter bile straight into the cultural bloodstream, actually -- and quite literally -- lowering the general vibration of the human collective cause, casting your vote for small-mindedness and solipsism and violence. Yep, you are. And yes indeed, your vote counts.
Here is the gist: The world consists of energy, billions of swirling masses of it contained in living vessels -- that's you -- and aimed out to the world, often radiating at random, intermingling, interacting, often uncontrolled and unaware, an enormous dizzying gorgeous complex kaleidoscopic organism of human interaction and interplay. We are abuzz. We are electric. We possess actual psychic and electromagnetic force. Duh. It's a fact.
It comes down to simple physics. Negative begets negative. Positive begets positive. War begets war, peace begets peace, Britney begets Christina begets N'Sync begets People magazine begets "Joe Millionaire" begets 10 million Prozac prescriptions begets a billion dumbed-down mind-sets, embittered souls. In a nutshell.
ShrubCo blindly steers the nation like a giant careening Hummer toward the history-mauling notion of preemptive violence, of attacking anyone who might somehow threaten the U.S. even before such a threat is tangible. He beats the war drum, staffs his administration with enough hawks to start 1,000 wars, slams the environment, cuts women's rights, etcetera and so on -- this all turns that swirling mass of energy that much more dark, vicious, angry, dumb.
And the world begins to follow. The culture darkens, people run scared, reactionary, depressed. The negative feeds upon itself, the tide turns, you are hit more and more frequently with that overwhelming feeling that we are in dire and ugly and powder-keg times, worse than ever, emotionally raw, politically appalling, spiritually hollow. Sound familiar?
Whereas notions of peace, individual thought, reason, simple acts of attuned mindfulness, of buying products and foods that sustain the planet, of making really good messy enthusiastic generous love, of regular laughter in the face of scowling Ashcroft or Cheney's corporate henchmen, of reading deeply and recalling wisdom people like the Dalai Lama talk about all the time -- these things literally up your anima's vibration, add positive energy back in, turn the collective volume back up.
That postcoital buzz? That post-party feel-good vibe? That genuine laughter? That gratuitously kind thing you did for that stranger? That celebration of your body and your sex and love and spirit in spite of mainstream religious puling and finger wagging? That deep meditative solitude? Bingo. That's the vibe you want. That's the vibe we all need. That's the vibration that makes all the difference.
But it's also the one that takes serious work and determination and you gotta do it every single day and it can only come from you. This sort of luminous divine power is messy and raw and hot and attaining more of it can be the most difficult thing you've ever done. But really, what else is there?
Look. Mystics and healers and sages and scientists and philosophers across the spiritual spectrum have known it for millennia: More advanced and enlightened souls -- and cultures -- vibrate at a higher level, a more bright and rigorous pitch. It's true. Bliss and joy and notions of peace and healing and laughter and personal choice, these things crank up the vibe. War and angst and fear and self-fulfilling prophecies of war and preemptive strikes and Jenna Bush, these things slam it down.
So then. You want to really annoy the conservative warmongering powers that be? Work your ass off to pump up the vibration. It's deeply personal. It's hard work. It means re-evaluating what you do and how you do it and how you treat others, the planet, what you buy and what you eat. It means learning. And it also means loving harder, more raw and real, minimal BS, minimal waste, figuring out true messy ugly slippery gorgeous divinity for yourself, on your own terms, and then sharing it with the world.
Wanna know what conservatives really hate?
What makes everyone from harmless GOP dittoheads to ultra-right-wing nutjobs full of rage and hiss and homophobia and blind jingoism roll their eyes and throw up their hands and scamper for their Bibles for reassurance that life is still repressed and we're still going to war and Dubya is still smackin' 'round the envurment along with them wimmin and homosekshuls and furriners?
Why, hippie crap, of course. New-age babble about love and peace and godless pagan prayer, organic foods and sustainable trees and chakras, divinity and luscious goddesses and soul paths and upping your personal vibration to counter all the venomous hatred slinging about the culture like some sort of conservative, fearmongering weapon of mass depression. Man, they just hate that.
The incessant drive to war, the blank-eyed young soldiers, the drab oil fields, the terse U.N. debates, Rumsfeld's ink-black eyes, the violence and 9/11 and Osama in hiding, Saddam's sneering and Shrub's smirking and Dick Cheney's defibrillator cranking on 11 -- these events are considered "real," they are tangible and raw and ugly and happening right now and we've got the pictures to prove it, all over the media, grainy and grim and mean, CNN and Fox News and frowning pundits and 100-point newspaper headlines, so you know it must be true.
Then there's you, walking through your daily life right now, eating and laughing and screwing and paying rent and thinking for yourself, filtering the onslaught and trying to remain connected to something divine and universal and authentic, all while straining to put this national trend toward violence and warmongering into some sort of acceptable frame.
You are not "real" in this same way. This is the feeling. Your experience is somehow irrelevant; what you do and how you maneuver this daily treachery is an insignificant side note to the big ugly daily political machinations because hey, it's war. It's the Big Boys. Angry White Men with very serious penis issues. All that matters is the machine, and the money, and the oil, and the WMD and the drumbeat rhetoric.
Which is, of course, utter BS. Here is what conservatives hate most: the idea that you really can, and do, make a difference. That you, hopefully working to align yourself with something deeper and more informed and perhaps not exactly Christian, or corporate, not exactly lockstep mainstream flag-waving God-fearing asexual consumer drone, you can affect the world, directly, right now, in ways you might not even realize, in ways that make them tremble and wince, in how much you laugh and love and eat and sleep and screw and breathe and in how deeply you penetrate into the soul's raison d'etre. But you gotta work at it. And it ain't easy. See? Fluffy new-age crap. They really hate that.
Here is the great fallacy of the American ethos, the one that powers SUV purchases and spawns a billion McDonald's franchises and gun purchases and Adam Sandler movies: it is the notion that Americans exist in a freewheelin' vacuum, that our daily choices don't, in fact, affect the world, and our neighbors, and our children, and the environment and our own bodies.
It is the idea that those very choices -- foods you eat, cars you drive, shows you watch, personal relations you have, waste you create, choices you make -- can't, in a very real and immediate way, erode your divine links, spit on your spiritual spark, taint your mystical meat. Every single one, every single time.
In other words, in buying that gun, smacking that child, abusing that spouse, screaming at that neighbor, buying that thuggish SUV, supporting that war, wishing death upon all them damn furriners, you may think you're exercising your God-given all-'Murkin right to do/say/drive whatever the hell you want because you're an American goddammit and no one will tell you how to live so back off.
Not quite. Rather, you are also injecting a deliberate dose of bitter bile straight into the cultural bloodstream, actually -- and quite literally -- lowering the general vibration of the human collective cause, casting your vote for small-mindedness and solipsism and violence. Yep, you are. And yes indeed, your vote counts.
Here is the gist: The world consists of energy, billions of swirling masses of it contained in living vessels -- that's you -- and aimed out to the world, often radiating at random, intermingling, interacting, often uncontrolled and unaware, an enormous dizzying gorgeous complex kaleidoscopic organism of human interaction and interplay. We are abuzz. We are electric. We possess actual psychic and electromagnetic force. Duh. It's a fact.
It comes down to simple physics. Negative begets negative. Positive begets positive. War begets war, peace begets peace, Britney begets Christina begets N'Sync begets People magazine begets "Joe Millionaire" begets 10 million Prozac prescriptions begets a billion dumbed-down mind-sets, embittered souls. In a nutshell.
ShrubCo blindly steers the nation like a giant careening Hummer toward the history-mauling notion of preemptive violence, of attacking anyone who might somehow threaten the U.S. even before such a threat is tangible. He beats the war drum, staffs his administration with enough hawks to start 1,000 wars, slams the environment, cuts women's rights, etcetera and so on -- this all turns that swirling mass of energy that much more dark, vicious, angry, dumb.
And the world begins to follow. The culture darkens, people run scared, reactionary, depressed. The negative feeds upon itself, the tide turns, you are hit more and more frequently with that overwhelming feeling that we are in dire and ugly and powder-keg times, worse than ever, emotionally raw, politically appalling, spiritually hollow. Sound familiar?
Whereas notions of peace, individual thought, reason, simple acts of attuned mindfulness, of buying products and foods that sustain the planet, of making really good messy enthusiastic generous love, of regular laughter in the face of scowling Ashcroft or Cheney's corporate henchmen, of reading deeply and recalling wisdom people like the Dalai Lama talk about all the time -- these things literally up your anima's vibration, add positive energy back in, turn the collective volume back up.
That postcoital buzz? That post-party feel-good vibe? That genuine laughter? That gratuitously kind thing you did for that stranger? That celebration of your body and your sex and love and spirit in spite of mainstream religious puling and finger wagging? That deep meditative solitude? Bingo. That's the vibe you want. That's the vibe we all need. That's the vibration that makes all the difference.
But it's also the one that takes serious work and determination and you gotta do it every single day and it can only come from you. This sort of luminous divine power is messy and raw and hot and attaining more of it can be the most difficult thing you've ever done. But really, what else is there?
Look. Mystics and healers and sages and scientists and philosophers across the spiritual spectrum have known it for millennia: More advanced and enlightened souls -- and cultures -- vibrate at a higher level, a more bright and rigorous pitch. It's true. Bliss and joy and notions of peace and healing and laughter and personal choice, these things crank up the vibe. War and angst and fear and self-fulfilling prophecies of war and preemptive strikes and Jenna Bush, these things slam it down.
So then. You want to really annoy the conservative warmongering powers that be? Work your ass off to pump up the vibration. It's deeply personal. It's hard work. It means re-evaluating what you do and how you do it and how you treat others, the planet, what you buy and what you eat. It means learning. And it also means loving harder, more raw and real, minimal BS, minimal waste, figuring out true messy ugly slippery gorgeous divinity for yourself, on your own terms, and then sharing it with the world.
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